Julia Hotchkiss Executrix of John Hotchkiss Deceased John Davenport and John Quincy v. Miles Greenwood’s Empirical Analysis
52 U.S. 248 · 1850
Citation profile
369 federal appellate · 77 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 797 later decisions (48 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2018 · most notably Graham v. John Deere Company of Kansas City Calmar Inc (1966), Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp. (1950)
369 federal appellate · 77 district ·
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on State ex rel. Stimson Mill Co. v. Board of Harbor Line Commissioners
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 797 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(U)nless more ingenuity and skill . . . were required . . . than were possessed by an ordinary mechanic acquainted with the business, there (is) an absence of that degree of skill and ingenuity which constitutes essential elements of every invention. In other words, the improvement is the work of the skillful mechanic, not that of the inventor.”
41 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“an ordinary mechanic acquainted with the business.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“new and useful improvement in making door and other knobs, of all kinds of clay used in pottery and of porcelain,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.